literal sense as yet in the Christian Church. Neither do we find any mention made of censers in any part of the Constitutions under the name of the Apostles; which is an argument that when the author of those Collections wrote, they were not yet become utensils of the altar, as they were when Evagrius' wrote his history; for he mentions golden censers, as well as golden crosses, given by Chosroes to the church of Constantinople. By which we may guess that crosses and censers were the product of one and the same age, and came into the Church together. 2 Images and relics upon the altar are usages also of later ages. And so are many utensils of the present Greeks, as the Lancea, Asteriscus, Dicerion, Tricerion, and Cochlear, which Bona says were never known in the Latin Church, much less in the ancient Church. So I shall not stand to explain them; nor say any thing here of the Bible, the diptychs, and their ritual books, which were both utensils and ornaments of the altar, because these will be spoken of in other places. The Altaria Portatilia, or moveable altars of the Latins, and the Antimensia, or consecrated cloths of the Greeks, to be used in places which have no altars, I omit likewise, as being a modern invention of later ages. Habertus,3 indeed, is very solicitous to have their portable altars thought as old as St. Basil, because St. Basil, in one of his Epistles, speaks of 'Idía ToáεŽαι, private tables, in some churches. But he wholly mistakes his author's meaning; for he is only speaking of the rudeness of some heretics, who, according to their usual custom, pulled down the Catholic altars, and set up their own altars, or tables, in the room. So that it is not those portable altars he is discoursing of, but heretical altars set up in opposition to the Catholics, which Habertus would hardly own to be the altars of the Romish Church. Durantus* and Bona" do not pretend to find them 'Evagr. lib. vi. c. 21. 3 Habert. Archieratic. p. 664. ἰδίαι τράπεζαι, Εp. 72. 2 Bona, Rer. Liturg. lib. i. c. 25. n. 6. Portatilia illa altaria videntur dici à Basilio * Durant. de Ritib. Eccles. lib. i. c. 25. n. 7. Bona, Rer. Liturg. lib. i. c. 20. n. 3. in any author before the time of Bede and Charles the Great, and therefore we may conclude they were a modern invention. But the 'Piridia, or Flabella, are somewhat more ancient, being mentioned by the author of the Constitutions,' who makes it one part of the deacon's office, in the time of the oblation, to stand on each side of the altar, and, with these instruments in their hands, brushes, or fans, we may English them, to drive away all such little insects as might drop into the cups, or infest the altar. The author of the Fasti Siculi, or Chronicon Alexandrinum, calls them Tíma 'Pimídia, and reckons them among the holy utensils of the altar, which were laid up among the rest, in the Sceuophylacium, or vestry of the church: for which reason I thought it not improper to mention them, whilst we are speaking of the utensils of the altar. SECT. 22. Of the Oblationarium, or Prothesis. In many churches, besides the communion-table, in one of the lesser recesses, or concha of the Bema, there was a place where the offerings of the people were received, out of which the bread and wine was taken that was consecrated at the altar. In the Liturgies under the names of Chrysostom,3 and St. James, and other modern Greek writers, this is called Пpódots and Пaparρárov, the side-table. In the Ordo Romanus it has the name of Oblationarium, and Prothesis also, for the one is made the explication of the other. And here also it is termed Paratorium, because when the offerings were received, preparation was made out of them for the eucharist. There is little question to be made but that the ancient churches had something answerable to this, but it went under other names; for we never meet with a Prothesis, or Paratorium, or Oblationarium, in express terms, in any ancient writer: but the thing itself we often find. Cyprian seems to speak of it under the borrowed 5 - 1 Constit. Apost. lib. viii. c. 12. 5 2 Chronic. Alexandr. p. 892. Chrysost. Liturg. Bibl. Patr. Gr. Lat. tom. ii. p. 744 Missa Jacob. ibid. p. 21. Cyprian. de Oper. et Eleemos. p. 203. Locuples et dives es, et Dominicum celebrare te credis, quæ Corbonam omninò non respicis ; quæ in dominicum sine sacrificio venis; quæ partem de sacrificio, quod pauper obtulit, sumis? name of the Corban, rebuking a rich and wealthy matron for coming to celebrate the eucharist without any regard to the Corban, and partaking of the Lord's supper without any. sacrifice of her own, but rather eating of the oblations which the poor had brought. In the fourth council of Carthage1 this place goes by the general name of the Sacrarium, or sanctuary, as being that part of the sanctuary where the oblations for the altar were received: for they had two repositories for the offerings of the people, the one without the church, called the Gazophylacium, or treasury, and the other within the church, which was this Sacrarium, or Corban. And therefore it is, that that council forbids the offerings of such Christians as were at variance one with another, to be received either in the treasury or the sanetuary. Paulinus is more exact in describing this place than any other ancient writer, yet he gives it a different name, calling it one of the Secretaria of the church; for he tells us there were two Secretaria, one on the right-hand, and the other on the left-hand of the altar. That on the righthand was the same with the Prothesis, or Paratorium, we are speaking of, and the use of it he describes in these verses, which were set over it: Hic locus est veneranda penus quà conditur, et quà This is the place where the holy food is reposited, and whence we take provision and furniture for the altar. That on the other side was the same with the Diaconicum Bematis, the use of which he describes in part in these two other verses, set over it also: Si quem sancta tenet meditandi in Lege voluntas, If any one (that is, any of the priests, whose apartment this was) is minded to meditate in the law of God, here he has room to sit and read the holy books. A little before, he Con, Carth. iv. can. 93. Oblationes dissidentium fratrum, neque in sacrario, neque in gazophylacio recipiantur. Paulin. Ep. 12. ad Sever. p. 154. 8 Paulin. ibid. p. 152. Una earum immolanti hostias jubilationis patet. (leg. parat.) Altera post sacerdotem (leg. post sacraficium,), capaci sinu receptat orantes, makes the like description of these two secret apartments in prose, telling us, "that the one was the place which prepared the host, or oblation of joy, for the priest ;" whence, doubtless, in after-ages, as I noted before, it got the name of Paratorium: "And the other was a place, whither the clergy retired after the sacrifice was ended, and the people were dismissed, to make their concluding prayers in private." SECT. 23. Of the Sceuophylacium, or Diaconicum Bematis. This latter place was a sort of vestry within the church, whither the deacons brought the vestments, and vessels, and utensils belonging to the altar, out of the greater Diaconicum, to be in readiness for divine service. And in this respect it had also the name of Σκευοφυλάκιον, the repository of the sacred utensils, because hither they were carried back immediately by the deacons, as soon as the service was ended, or whilst the post-communion-psalm was singing by the people, as the author of the Chronicon Alexandrinum1 represents it. Here the priests also put on their robes they used to officiate in; and hither they came again, when the public service was ended, to make their private addresses to God, as has been noted already, out of Pauliņus and in the Liturgies inscribed to St. James, St. Mark, St. Chrysostom, there are the forms of prayer appointed to be used in this place; one of which, particularly in St. James's Liturgy, is ushered in with this title, or rubric, "The prayer to be said in the Sceuophylacium, after the dismission of the people." The deacons commonly had the care of this place, and thence it is often called the Diaconicum, and Bematis Diaconicum, to distinguish it from another Diaconicum, which we shall find in the next chapter, among the Exedræ, or outer buildings of the church. Du Fresne thinks also, that the name of Diaconicum was 1 Chron. Alexand. p. 892. c. 12. Vid. Coteler. Not. in Const. Apost. lib. viii. 2 Liturg. Marc. Bibl. Patr. Gr. Lat. tom. ii. p. 41. Chrysost, ibid, p. 88. 8 Liturg. 3 Liturg. Jacob. ibid. p. 23. Ευχὴ λεγομένη ἐν τῶ σκευοφυλακίῳ μετὰ τὴν ἀπόλυσιν, Silent. p. 581. Du Fresne, Com. in Paul, sometimes more peculiarly given to that part of the Bema, or chancel, which was between the veils of the chancel and the veils of the Ciborium, or altar; and that the place within the veils of the altar was distinguished particularly by the name of Presbyterium, because it was the place of the presbyters, as the other was the place of the deacons, alleging for this, a canon of the council of Laodicea,1 which others understand in a different sense, for the whole chancel or sanctuary of the church. CHAP. VII. Of the Baptistery, and other Outer Buildings, called the Exedra of the Church. SECT. I.-Baptisteries anciently Buildings distinct from the Church, We have hitherto taken a view of the several parts of the ancient churches within the walls. It now remains that we consider a little such buildings as were distinct from the main body, and yet within the bounds of the church taken in the largest sense, which buildings are all comprized under one general name of the Exedræ of the church. For Eusebius, speaking of the church of Paulinus at Tyre, says,3 when that curious artist had finished his famous structure within, he then set himself about the Exedræ, or buildings that joined one to another by the sides of the church;" by which buildings he tells us he chiefly meant the place, which was for the use of those who needed the purgation and sprinkling of water and the Holy Ghost, that is, doubtless the baptistery of the church. He describes the church of Antioch, built by Constantine, after the same manner, telling us,* "that it was surrounded with Exedræ and buildings, that had lower and upper stories in them." So that, as Valesius and other critics have rightly observed, Con. Laodic. can. 21. 2 See before sect. 4. of this chapter, Euseb. de Vit. Constant. s Euseb. lib. x. c. 4. p. 381. Ἐπὶ τὰ ἐκτὸς τῇ νεὼ μετήει, ἐξέδρας κ οἴκες τὰς παρ ἑκάτερα μεγίτες ἐπισκευάζων, &c. lib. iii. c. 50. |